


The Key-Holder

by Star55



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, over use of metaphor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-27
Updated: 2012-09-27
Packaged: 2017-11-15 03:14:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star55/pseuds/Star55
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone is born with a key to their heart. Every human being has one and their heart sits in a small glass box that can only be opened by the key-holder, the soul mate, the one we’re meant to be with for the rest of our lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Key-Holder

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:** Mentions of hate crimes to the body (nothing specific nor graphic).  
>  **A/N:** This one is for V. ♥  
>  **Disclaimer:** Not mine. I just have a vivid and healthy imagination.

Everyone is born with a key to their heart. 

Every human being has one and their heart sits in a small glass box that can only be opened by the key-holder, the soul mate, the one we’re meant to be with for the rest of our lives.

It takes a lot of time for some people to find their key-holders. Some people find their key-holder quickly while some people die without ever having found them. 

There is one key-holder for every person in the world and sometimes, if you’re really, really lucky, there’s two.

The key-holder’s key is the only key that will fit the lock of the glass box that their true love’s heart sits in. 

Sometimes, the box just opens and other times, they can be broken into. No one ever wants their heart to be broken or stolen away to never be able to love or be loved. Crimes against the body can cause the heart to shatter within the box and others will cause the heart to mend itself, leaving it whole again for when the key-holder comes.

The hearts that are broken without the key-holder having ever found them rarely survive. The heart isn’t designed to be broken and it can be a messy and complex process to mend the heart and it is almost never guaranteed to work again or to beat as strongly.

When Kurt was eight years old, he watched as his dad’s heart shattered in the box that his mother’s heart used to be held in. He watched it as it started to slow down, the soft _thump, thump_ of it beating became less and less frequent than it used to.

People can still exist if their heart is broken but it takes a special kind of person to keep on living and an even more special kind of person to be able to love again.

After his mother died, Kurt would look at his dad’s heart every day and hope that it would beat normally again. The slowness of his heart worried him and even though he could see most of the broken pieces in the bottom of the glass box, there was one small piece left visible and Kurt knew, somewhere in his child-like mind that that piece kept beating because of him.

He knew it was his job to find someone who would make his dad’s heart beat again. 

It took a while. A lot longer than Kurt had anticipated but when he was sixteen, he found someone that could possibly mend his father’s heart.

It had been a hard task to get the setting and the timing perfect but he knew in his mind that Carole was the one who could mend his dad’s heart.

Carole’s own heart was as broken as his father’s was and Kurt knew that if they spent time together, they would heal each other and they would be happy again.

By the time Kurt was seventeen, his father’s heart was beating strongly once again.

Kurt wasn’t so lucky.

He hadn’t found his key-holder and he had reached his twenty-ninth birthday without a single clue as to who his key-holder would be. 

Everyone in his life and his family had found their key-holders before they reached twenty-five and Kurt knew he didn’t have a lot of time left.

You see, Kurt had his heart shattered without the key-holder having ever opened his box.

When Kurt was still a teenager, a hate crime was committed against his body, violating not only him physically and mentally but emotionally as well.

Kurt had watched helpless as someone had smashed his glass box to pieces and shatter his heart right in front of him. He could still feel the pain of the ordeal whenever the nights were long or when he was alone but nothing saddened him more than knowing his box was broken, irreparable. 

No one had ever heard of fixing the _box_ the heart resided in before. 

So, Kurt found a new box to put his heart into. It wasn’t as nice as the one he had been given at birth and it surely didn’t have his original lock but after that night, Kurt had managed to salvage the lock from his original box and he kept it with him at all times. Just in case.

His heart was still quite broken in its new box with only the tiniest of pieces still beating. 

Kurt knew he didn’t have much longer to live.

Everyone knew if you hadn’t found your key-holder before your thirtieth birthday, you would die within a month. 

Kurt was three weeks shy of his thirtieth birthday when he met Blaine.

Blaine had looked at him and the moment their hands touched for the first time, Kurt felt something. He didn’t know what it was but it was something.

Blaine asked to see Kurt’s box and Kurt had regretfully informed him that he didn’t have his original box anymore, it had been broken.

The sad look that crossed Blaine’s face was one that Kurt would never forget.

When Kurt went to check on his heart a few days later, he discovered that it was missing.

In a panic, he asked his dad if he knew where it had gone and Burt had told him that someone’s key had fit the original lock so he had let them take it.

Kurt was devastated. He sobbed himself to sleep that night, certain that he would be dead within the next day if his heart wasn’t returned.

To his surprise, Kurt stayed alive. He still had no idea where his heart was and he was certain that his attacker from his teenage years had found him, determined that he was going to die a slow, agonising death without his heart.

Kurt worried every single day that his heart was absent. He worried for his dad, for Carole, for his step-brother Finn. He worried for his friends and the rest of his family but most of all, he worried for himself.

He was certain that he still had so much more living to do. He couldn’t die at thirty, it would be unfair.

The days passed and Kurt could feel his body begin to shut down at the length of time his heart had been missing.

Two days before his thirtieth birthday, there was a knock on Kurt’s front door.

He answered it, feeling tired, sad, and lonely but when he saw Blaine’s face, all of that exhaustion disappeared.

Blaine had bit his lip and gave Kurt a worried look. “I’m sorry I took your heart,” he had whispered.

Kurt’s eyes widened when Blaine produced Kurt’s completely mended heart in a brand new box with his original lock.

“My key fit your lock,” Blaine offered by way of explanation.

Kurt reached out with shaking hands and turned Blaine’s key in the lock.

His heartbeat was loud and clear and as Kurt looked at it, he couldn’t even see where it had been broken in the first place. 

Kurt put the glass box back on its holder and he turned to Blaine, so many questions in his mind but unable to utter a word.

“My heart was broken too,” Blaine offered. “Mending your heart put mine back together too.”

Blaine produced another box and Kurt gasped. He saw a heart beating in the box but there was still one piece sitting on the bottom. 

“Your heart is still broken,” Kurt said.

Without hesitation, Kurt pulled out the key he had been given at birth and he stepped forwards, slipping it into the lock with ease. He turned it and the box gave a sigh of relief as it opened. 

The piece that lay on the bottom of the box was suddenly no longer there. Both men watched as it settled into the spot on the heart where it belonged and the heart started to beat loudly once more.

Blaine’s gaze met Kurt’s over the top of the box and he smiled. 

“Today is my thirtieth birthday,” Blaine whispered. “Thank you.”

 

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